


No Better Version of Me

by Des98



Series: The Adventures of Mini Zuko [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, Drawing linked, Gen, Like, Zuko has not grown since the agni kai, also the scarring is more expansive, as well as tumblr post this is based on, because he is leeetle, everyone thinks he is babie, he also gets an OC pet because why not and that was one of my headcanons, that one drawing from pakchoys on tumblr, zuko is short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:14:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25212235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Des98/pseuds/Des98
Summary: That one tumblr post?  Where Zuko is shorter than in canon?  Well, I wrote four thousand words on it.  Oops.
Relationships: Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), The Gaang & Zuko (Avatar), Zuko & Zuko's Crew (Avatar)
Series: The Adventures of Mini Zuko [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1826704
Comments: 100
Kudos: 1962





	No Better Version of Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [noodlebunny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/noodlebunny/gifts), [notonstandbi-edits (Tumblr)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=notonstandbi-edits+%28Tumblr%29).



> Hey! So, here's the tumblr post this is based on.  
> younggayanddoingokay.tumblr.com/post/623382357684207616/younggayanddoingokay-jasmine-tea-09  
> And here's the art i used to make his scar  
> https://pakchoys.tumblr.com/post/622200986617937920/book-1-zuko-is-a-beautiful-bald-boy-but-what-if-he
> 
> Also, there's a brief reference to someone thinking Zuko is a 'war child' (a euphemism for half-fire, half-earth, probably under non-consensual circumstances), so if that's a tw for you please be careful.

Zuko’s father was quite tall, and Zuko’s grandfather was quite tall. Even Zuko’s _mother_ was rather tall in comparison to other fire nation women. So Zuko thought that _he_ would be tall as well, for some reason. He should have known that his luck wasn’t that good; his father must have been right when he said that he’d used up all his luck being born. 

If there _had_ been any luck left, he’d certainly used it all surviving the Agni Kai with his father. The incident had left him with a scar all down the left side of his face, leaving his ear (and the hearing in it) mangled beyond repair and his left eye a milky, blind white. From there, it extended down his neck and all the way to the tips of the fingers on his left hand in a blotchy, uneven pattern of scarring that had left him delirious with fever for a month. As soon as it was determined he would definitely live, he was carried onto a ship, still barely cognizant. It was another six months before he could stand and walk and fight properly again. Uncle said that it was amazing and admirable that he’d managed to adjust to his disability so quickly, but Zuko didn’t believe him. He knew that he was weak, and that taking half a year before he was at his pre-Agni Kai skill level was unacceptable. That was half a year that he could have been getting _better_ at his swords and his firebending and his acrobatics and sneaking (what he dubbed his ‘ninja skills,’ but that sounded childish, so he wasn’t going to call them that out loud). And now he was even further behind Azula.

To top it off, he didn’t get any taller, either. He kept waiting for a growth spurt, for the day when he would shoot up past Uncle and closer to his father’s height. But not only did that not happen, he didn’t grow a single inch. He stayed _shorter_ than Uncle, and by sixteen he knew better than to believe that he was getting any taller. Uncle said that it was okay, and that there was nothing wrong with being short, but Zuko thought that _of course_ Uncle would say that, because he already thought Zuko’s weakness in bending was okay and that ‘you are actually quite advanced for your age, my nephew, and judging yourself by your prodigy sister is not an accurate measure of standard firebending abilities.’ Also, he was pretty sure that Uncle was just happier to be taller than someone.

He thought things would get better when he found the avatar, but even _that_ was apparently asking too much. He met the water tribe’s sole warrior on the ice by their village (it was barely big enough to be called a village, really, but he wasn’t exactly in a position to judge things for being too small, not that he would ever admit that out loud).

“They’re sending kids out to fight now?” the guy asked, his fiercely painted face seeming to stall in indecision for a moment. “That’s just messed up.”

“I’m sixteen!” Zuko protested angrily, marching up to the water tribe peasant and fiercely shoving himself into the other teen’s face. Which was a mistake, since his head only came up to the peasant’s chest and he had to crane his neck sharply upward to glare.

“Okay,” the peasant snorted. “You’re sixteen, and I’m the firelord.”

Zuko normally wasn’t super great with sarcasm (or any social cues, really), but the peasant was being so derisive that it was easy even for him to pick up on it.

“I _am_ sixteen!” he snapped, sparks coming out of his nose and forcing the other boy back.

“Look kid, I don’t wanna fight you.” Sokka raised his hands placatingly. “You’re like, ten, and you’re blind in one eye. It would go against my honor to have to hurt you, so why don’t you just walk away and-”

“I’ll show _you_ honor!” Zuko yelled, and then kicked his ass.

Well, up until the boomerang came back around and nearly took his head off. Luckily (or perhaps unluckily, depending on how you looked at it), it whizzed by a couple inches above Zuko’s head.

The Avatar wasn’t helping Zuko’s mood, either.

“You’re just a kid!” Zuko snapped, unbelieving. _This_ was the fire nation’s greatest threat?

“Yeah, well, so are you!” the avatar quipped back. “Monkey Feathers, I think you might be younger than me!”

“I am _not!”_ Zuko did not whine, because whining was for children, which he was _not._

He’d been spending so much time with his crew lately that he’d forgotten what it was like to not be taken seriously. Sure, the soldiers under his command might occasionally try to ruffle his hair (at significant risk to their own eyebrows, he might add), but they knew quite well that he could and _had_ taken every single one of them in a sparring match at some point, and the only height jokes they made about him were along the lines of ‘the prince is only as short as he is because it means he’s closer to the _other_ evil spirits that live underground’ (they thought he couldn’t hear them, but for Agni’s sake, he was deaf in _one_ ear, not both. But they served him well, and he might be secretly just the _slightest_ bit fond of them- which he would _never_ tell Uncle, or his smugness would be unbearable, even though he probably already knew-, so he let it go. He was sure his father would say that this made him weak, but he couldn’t help it. It would all be forgiven when he brought him the avatar, anyway).

Having people legitimately not see him as the very legitimate (albeit pint-sized) threat that he was enraged him almost more than losing the avatar.

When he tried to help the crew pull the ship out of the ice the avatar had frozen it in after his escape, Uncle suggested he take a walk. He didn’t say it, but Zuko knew that none of them were excited to be stuck on the open sea in a tiny, outdated naval ship with him while he was worked up into a temper like this. So he agreed; he _could_ stand to calm down. 

He stomped along in the snow, thinking about how much he hated the cold. Sure, the breath of fire Uncle taught him kept him plenty warm, but it didn’t stop the scarring from aching and making the damaged skin feel like it was stretched too tight over his body and could crack open at any minute. He’d lost the avatar, their _enemies_ had treated him like a child, and a not-insignificant portion of the left side of his upper body really fucking hurt. So yeah, he was cranky. Sue him.

He ran a hand through his hair in frustration, and the tie on his phoenix tail snapped, causing his long hair to fall loose around his face. For the first couple months after his banishment, he’d shaved it around the plume as typically done by losers of an Agni Kai, but being mostly bald made him look even dumber than being possibly the shortest prince in fire nation history. Also, babies were bald, and he was tiny enough without anyone making _that_ comparison.

He let the hair fall forward to cover the left side of his face and provide a little extra insulation against the biting winds. It’s not like he could see out of that eye, anyway.

The endless white would be hard enough for someone with good depth perception to navigate, so Zuko naturally nearly face planted several times. He was contemplating turning back and just letting the crew deal with his temper regardless when he was hit by a flying white blur and a warm, wet tongue.

It was a polar bear dog. Zuko had heard they were vicious, but this one seemed friendly (normally, polar bear dogs _were_ vicious, but Zuko was completely unaware of the effect that he had on normally-fierce animals. If there _was_ a creature out there that didn’t love him, it was yet to be discovered). Zuko loved animals, and he’d never been able to resist petting them even when it was unbefitting of a prince to be showing affection for what his father called ‘weak and lesser creatures.’

“Your ears are really soft,” he told it. His tone was soft too, but there was nobody around to hear and nobody to have to be confident and fierce and intimidating for. Soon he was pouring out his troubles to the creature while he gave her belly scratches.

“I should probably be getting back to Uncle and my crew,” he told her eventually. “Thanks for making me feel better.”

To his surprise, instead of lumbering back the way it came, the polar bear dog followed him. 

“Are you… are you coming with me?” he asked her. “Because it’s going to get warmer where we’re going.”

This did not seem to deter the polar bear dog, who nudged him with her nose and crouched down low. Zuko cocked his head at her, and she nudged him again.

“Do you… do you want me to ride you?” he asked her. She didn’t answer, but she _did_ stay crouched down. When Zuko experimentally made as if to toss a leg over her back, she didn’t move or react. So, carefully and mindful not to hurt her, he mounted.

Riding a polar bear dog bareback was a new experience, but it was no trickier than not falling off of palace roofs or too-thin tree branches as he had scurried his way above everyone else’s heads as a child. It was one of the only places he could get away from Azula, so he’d learned to revel in leaping between roofs and trees and along precarious places that a child should probably not be making use of. But his mother couldn’t watch him _all_ the time, and then she was gone and father hadn’t cared, and would probably prefer it if he _did_ fall and die, so…

“This is Naga,” he’d told a shocked Uncle and crew who honestly shouldn’t have been shocked by his antics at that point. “She wants to come with us.”

[]

Sokka wasn’t expecting the scarred child soldier to be riding a polar bear dog the next time they saw him, at Kyoshi island. The rest of his soldiers were riding komodo-rhinos, and the komodo-rhinos seemed to be following him more than listening to the commands of their riders (he was right. None of the navy-rejects that made up the crew of Zuko’s ship were very good at riding anything, much less komod-rhinos, but all they really needed to do was follow Zuko, and animals _loved_ following Zuko, so it worked out fine).

The polar bear dog also seemed to _love_ the little prince. Which, okay, he _was_ pretty cute. He was a tiny ball of rage and he had clearly been hurt badly and if he wasn’t chasing them and trying to capture Aang, Sokka would have wrapped him up in a blanket and force-fed him some sea-prunes until he stopped taking himself so damn seriously.

So he wasn’t really sure whether to feel betrayed that a polar bear dog, a _water tribe animal,_ had clearly adopted a _fire nation prince,_ or to go up to the animal and declare (from a safe distance) “yeah, buddy, I get it.”

“Who sends a _child_ off to war?” Suki said in disgust as they put out fires as quickly as they could. “They ruined a perfectly good ten-year-old, is what they did. Look at him, he’s been propagandized.”

“Tell me about it,” Sokka agreed, before she kissed him on the cheek and he blushed through his makeup and he and Katara and Aang were taking off.

“I can’t believe that poor kid expects anyone to believe that he’s sixteen,” Katara muttered. Yeah, she wasn’t _happy_ that they had an angry little gremlin chasing them and trying to capture Aang, but it was hard for her and her nurturing nature not to _also_ feel bad for the kid. Someone had clearly hurt him, and hurt him badly, and for the fire nation to brutally scar one of their own children and then send him off to further their imperialist agenda was fucked up even for them.

“I know, right? The good side of his face still has baby fat, for Tui’s sake,” Sokka agreed. “I’m pretty sure he’s like, ten. If he’s any older than twelve, tops, I’ll eat my boomerang.”

[]

When Zuko rescued Aang as the Blue Spirit, and he got knocked out, he woke up with his mask still on and Aang sitting nearby.

“Hey Zuko,” the avatar said.

Zuko sputtered angrily- didn’t anyone appreciate the value of a secret identity?

“I didn’t move your mask, don’t worry. It’s just, well, there’s not too many _other_ kids your size with crazy ninja skills. Anyway, wanna be friends?”

Zuko threw a fireball at him, and the avatar had the audacity to _laugh_ as he flitted away.

[]

Naga was the best girl. Zuko was so grateful to have her. When pirates blew up his ship, she sensed it before he did and barked to alert him just in time. He still got beat up pretty bad, but his body being one big bruise and his ribs being broken weren’t the worst thing that could have happened to him. And luckily, Uncle was able to keep her on Zhao’s ship by playing it off as ‘the only thing I still have left of my poor nephew,’ and everyone bought it. Zhao thought he was a sentimental old fool, but he still bought it.

Besides, Zhao was having enough trouble keeping order on board his own ship without concerning himself with the presumably-dead prince’s polar bear dog. Losing an Agni Kai to a banished teenager who came up to the center of his chest had caused his reputation to take a real hit, and Zuko heard more than one of them laughing in the halls about how funny it was that the admiral ‘got his ass handed to him by a sparky little twig.’

Zhao was not well liked by anyone, and his own people were no exception.

Zuko’s blind eye and severe scarring was kind of a dead give away even under a uniform, so he found a tiny little corner in the storage room that nobody else would think to check because nobody else could actually _get into it_ (Zuko’s small size came in handy for once, not that that made him any happier about it). Uncle would sneak him enough food at night to get through the next day, and so it went until they reached the north.

Naga followed him to the shore, and she tried to hold him back from jumping through the turtle-seal caverns. She wasn’t willing to hurt him, though, and Zuko had no compunction about ripping through the clothes she’d grabbed with her teeth to try to hold him back, so he managed it anyway, and she had no choice but to follow.

“Back, Naga,” he’d ordered when she growled and prepared to pounce at the water tribe girl attacking him. “This is between me and her.”

Naga agreed, reluctantly, but she was on edge, and Zuko knew that if the avatar’s friend had expressed any real intent to hurt him instead of merely incapacitate, then she would have ripped her to shreds in an instant. Luckily it didn’t come to that.

He climbed aboard Naga’s back with the avatar, and they bounded away. He was grateful, again, that he had her, not least because, although he was very strong, he was also (almost) the same height as the avatar, and that would have made him awkward to carry on foot.

His plan to steal the avatar (and the invasion of the north) still failed, though, and Zhao would also apparently rather die than be rescued by Zuko, so that felt _great._

The three weeks on a raft floating on the open sea were hard, but they would have been a lot harder without Naga with them and regularly jumping off the raft to dive for fish to feed them all.

Solid ground was nice, until Uncle’s favorite resort cheerfully informed them that there was a fifty percent discount for children under twelve and handed him a kids menu.

Zuko would have screamed if he weren’t so tired and dehydrated.

[]

Azula was taller than him. Azula was _fucking taller than him!_ She had a good four to six inches on him now, and she gleefully made fun of him for it. It almost ruined the joy of finding out that they'd be going home. Almost.

 _Naturally,_ he mused later, as he and Uncle cut their hair by the river, _it was too good to be true._

[]

Song and her mother kept trying to adopt Zuko.

“We can’t really afford to keep an extra adult around,” her mother began, “but we’d be happy to look after your nephew and you can come back for him when you’re doing better. A child shouldn’t have to live the life of a beggar,” the woman tutted sympathetically.

“I’m not a child!” Zuko was getting _really_ tired of that phrase.

“Of course, dear. You’ve had to grow up far too fast. It’s a real shame.”

Uncle jovially declined their offer to look after his nephew, but thanked them for it all the same and didn’t back Zuko up when he tried to assert his actual age. He was still mad about the ‘Mushi’ thing, apparently.

Zuko was half-tempted to steal their ostrich horse in an act of retaliation, but that would be childish, and he was _not_ a child. Besides, he had Naga, and as annoying as Song and her mother were, they had suffered enough.

[]

Zuko just wanted to do some crime, but every time he tried to rob people, they just _gave_ him stuff. Sometimes people even gave him stuff when he _wasn’t_ trying to rob them. Like a man and his pregnant wife, who saw Zuko passing by and insisted he come share their meal with them, even though they clearly barely had enough for themselves.

“Really, you need it more,” he tried to insist.

“You take my portion, son,” the husband rejected his refusal. “You’re a growing boy (oh, the irony), and as a soon-to-be-father myself, I can’t imagine letting a child go hungry.”

“I’m not a child.” The refrain was starting to feel pointless by now. And there was a tight ache in his stomach that _wasn’t_ caused by hunger at the insistence that fathers didn’t let children go hungry. As someone whose own father had often deprived him of dinner if his forms weren’t perfect, Zuko couldn’t easily reconcile that with his own definition of the word. 

[]

“I’m Prince Zuko, son of Ursa and Fire Lord Ozai, and rightful heir to the throne!” he roared, as he defeated the last of the soldiers that had taken Lee and hurt the family that had been so kind to him.

“The prince is a teenager, and you’re just a kid,” one of the villagers yelled. 

A woman carefully approached, waving her arms exaggeratedly so that she wouldn’t spook him by coming up on his blind side.“You don’t have to be making up tales here to get people to respect you, child. I know the world can’t have been easy for a war child with no family, but nobody is going to hurt you here. You can’t control your bending curse, little one, and we’re not mad at you. No sense sayin’ crazy nonsense like how you’re the prince of the fire nation to try to scare us off so we don’t attack. You’re just a kid, and we’re not monsters. Now you and that bear-dog thing of yours come and eat some dinner.”

Zuko was tired, and hungry, and the scarred flesh of his left hand and fingers hurt from the sword fight (he didn’t have his usual ointment that he’d put on every night back on the ship, to keep the scarring from hurting as much, and sometimes it would crack open as he and Naga travelled, and drops of his blood would fall and stain her white fur).

He swallowed back his protests about his age and followed the nice old woman.

[]

“Your big sister is scary,” Sokka told Zuko conversationally, the next time they ran into each other.

“Big sister? I don’t _have_ a big sister.” Zuko was so confused he almost forgot to sound angry about it.

“Sure you do. Scary blue fire? About yay high?” Sokka asked, motioning at around the height of his own nose. “Princess of the fire nation? We asked if she was your big sister and she said yes. Or is there another princess and she’s like, your cousin or something?”

“That’s Azula- she’s my _little_ sister, and my cousin is dead,” Zuko corrected, angry. _Of course_ they’d ask Azula if she was his _big_ sister, and of course she’d agree. 

“Awww, sorry about your cousin, little buddy,” Sokka said, clearly not believing him about the ‘little sister’ thing.

“I’m _not_ your buddy, I’m _not_ little, and I _don’t_ need your sympathy,” Zuko snapped.

The stupid water tribe peasant actually tried to _ruffle his hair._ Luckily, Zuko discouraged _that_ idea with a blast of fire, and Naga came to stand protectively in front of him.

The fight ended with Uncle struck by Azula, and the waterbender girl ignored all his angry blustering and came to heal him before setting off. Zuko wanted to attack, but Naga let her through, so he stayed his hand and allowed himself, just for a moment, to trust her.

Uncle was alive, so the trust was not wasted. Zuko shoved down the confused feelings that arose out of the incident, and kept going towards Ba Sing Se with Uncle.

[]

“We don’t do child labor here,” Pao of Pao’s family tea shop told Uncle sternly, when they applied for jobs. “You can work here, and I’ll adjust your salary enough to account for a dependent, but I’m not getting busted for employing a little kid.”

“I’m sixteen!” Zuko knew it was pointless, but having Uncle back reignited some of his old spirit, and his assertion was more lively than it had been since before they’d become wanted fugitives.

“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna separate you from your grandpa. You’re more than welcome to sit here during his shifts and do your homework or something.”

Just for that, Zuko decided to become the best damn tea server there ever was, paid or not.

He ended up making more in tips than Uncle’s whole salary. He tried to be madder about it, but his pride had taken so many hits these past months that being called ‘the cute little tea boy’ seemed tame in comparison.

[]

Azula was offering him the chance to go home. And even though Zuko hesitated, part of him really wanted to take it. He… he didn’t want to lose what he had with Uncle, but he really _did_ want his honor back, and to be a prince again, and to have his father’s ~~love~~ respect. He stood, chewing his lip uncertainly as he looked between his sister and the avatar’s group.

“Oh, come on Zuzu. Come home with me! Father needs his little boy back, and I really do miss my little brother.”

Any decision Zuko might have made was thrown out the window as he growled and launched himself at his sister like a feral pygmy puma.

Such goes the tale of how Zuko joined the avatar.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I gave Zuko a polar bear dog, and YES, I gave it the same name as Korra's. I figured that in this verse, Korra named hers after her Uncle Zuko's. :D


End file.
